It’s The End. The credits roll up. No sign of my wife. So we chat a bit. Sharks, seaside, swimming … still no wife. We go on talking. Now, I suppose I like the woman well enough, but after an hour of this our lack of things in common becomes obvious. In a word, she’s my wife’s friend, not mine.

Short of what else to do, I’m already thinking about popping in the next video when she suddenly brings up the story of her parents’ divorce. I can’t fathom the connection—at least to my mind, there’s no link between swimming and her folks splitting up—but I guess a reason is where you find it.

“THEY WEREN’T REALLY SHORTS,” she says. “They were lederhosen.”

“You mean those hiking pants the Germans wear? The ones with the shoulder straps?”

“You got it. Father wanted a pair of lederhosen as a souvenir gift. Well, Father’s pretty tall for his generation. He might even look good in them, which could be why he wanted them. But can you picture a Japanese wearing lederhosen? I guess it takes all kinds.”

I’m still not any closer to the story. I have to ask, what were the circumstances behind her father’s request—and of whom?— for these souvenir lederhosen?

“Oh, I’m sorry. I’m always telling things out of order. Stop me if things don’t make sense,” she says.

Okay, I say.

“Mother’s sister was living in Germany and she invited Mother for a visit. Something she’d always been meaning to do. Of course, Mother can’t speak German, she’d never even been abroad, but having been an English teacher for so long she’d had that overseas bee in her bonnet. It’d been ages since she’d seen my aunt. So Mother approached Father, How about taking ten days off and going to Germany, the two of us? Father’s work couldn’t allow it, and Mother ended up going alone.”

“That’s when your father asked for the lederhosen, I take it?”

“Right,” she says. “Mother asked what he wanted her to bring back, and Father said lederhosen.”

“Okay so far.”

Her parents were reasonably close. They didn’t argue until all hours of the night; her father didn’t storm out of the house and not come home for days on end. At least not then, though apparently there had been rows more than once over him and other women.

“Not a bad man, a hard worker, but kind of a skirt chaser,” she tosses off matter-of-factly. No relation of hers, the way she’s talking. For a second, I almost think her father is deceased. But no, I’m told, he’s alive and well.

“Father was already up there in years, and by then those troubles were all behind them. They seemed to be getting along just fine.”